The sex-positive movement is a social and philosophical movement that seeks to change cultural attitudes and norms around sexuality, promoting the recognition of sexuality as a natural and healthy part of the human experience and emphasizing the importance of personal sovereignty, safer sex practices, and consensual sex. It covers every aspect of sexual identity including gender expression, orientation, relationship to the body, relationship-style choice, and reproductive rights. Sex-positivity is "an attitude towards human sexuality that regards all consensual sexual activities as fundamentally healthy and pleasurable, encouraging sexual pleasure and experimentation." The sex-positive movement also advocates for comprehensive sex education and safe sex as part of its campaign. The movement generally makes no moral distinctions among types of sexual activities, regarding these choices as matters of personal preference.
Disability studies is an academic discipline that examines the meaning, nature, and consequences of disability. Initially, the field focused on the division between "impairment" and "disability," where impairment was an impairment of an individual's mind or body, while disability was considered a social construct. This premise gave rise to two distinct models of disability: the social and medical models of disability. In 1999 the social model was universally accepted as the model preferred by the field. However, in recent years, the division between the social and medical models has been challenged. Additionally, there has been an increased focus on interdisciplinary research. For example, recent investigations suggest using "cross-sectional markers of stratification" may help provide new insights on the non-random distribution of risk factors capable of acerbating disablement processes.
Attraction to disability is a sexualised interest in the appearance, sensation and experience of disability. It may extend from normal human sexuality into a type of sexual fetishism. Sexologically, the pathological end of the attraction tends to be classified as a paraphilia. Other researchers have approached it as a form of identity disorder. The most common interests are towards amputations, prosthesis, and crutches.
Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf, 1936, is a work by Wilhelm Reich. The subtitle is "zur sozialistischen Umstrukturierung des Menschen", the double title reflecting the two-part structure of the work.
Volkmar Sigusch was a German sexologist, physician and sociologist. From 1973 to 2006, he was the director of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft at the clinic of Goethe University in Frankfurt.
Rosalind Mary Owens, known as Tuppy Owens, is an English sex therapist, consultant, campaigner, writer and former adult model.
Asta Anthony Philpot is an American man who was the protagonist of a 2007 BBC One documentary film titled For one night only. He is affected with arthrogryposis, which impairs, since his birth, his physical ability of movement. He advocates the right to an active sexual life for people with disabilities, even if this means paying for sex.
Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg is a German sociologist, ethnologist, sexologist, and writer further specializing into the fields of psychology, Indo-European studies, religious studies, and philosophy, since 1980 also increasingly anthropology. As Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg uses these approaches in research particularly in the fields of sexology, homophobia, and prejudice studies, the US Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists of the American Anthropological Association ranked Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's works on homophobia as internationally outstanding.
Sexuality and disability is a topic regarding the sexual behavior and practices of people with disabilities, who have a range of sexual desires and differ in the ways they choose to express their sexuality. Commonly, people with disabilities lack comprehensive sex education that would assist in their sexual lives. This roots from the idea that people with disabilities are asexual in nature and are not sexually active. Although some people with disabilities are asexual, it is a misconception to label all as such. Many people with disabilities lack rights and privileges that would enable them to have intimacy and relationships. When it comes to sexuality and disability there is a sexual discourse that surrounds it. The intersection of sexuality and disability is often associated with victimization, abuse, and purity.
Dagmar Herzog is Distinguished Professor of History and the Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She has published extensively on the histories of sexuality and gender, psychoanalysis, theology and religion, Jewish-Christian relations and Holocaust memory, and she has edited anthologies on sexuality in the Third Reich, sexuality in twentieth-century Austria, and the Holocaust.
Research published from 2000 to 2020 illustrates increased prevalence rates of sexual violence against people with intellectual disabilities, compared to the general population.:61 The World Health Organization (WHO) funded a study which concluded that 15% of the adult population worldwide in 2012 had a disability, putting them at increased risk of physical, sexual, and intimate partner violence. Of that 15%, 6.1% or an estimated 7,008,716,704 adults worldwide had intellectual disability with 5.5% experiencing sexual violence. In another 2012 report, the WHO found that worldwide, children with intellectual disabilities experienced a 4.6 times greater risk of sexual violence than those without disability. In the United States, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in the National Crime Victimization Survey the rate of sexual violence for those with an intellectual disability is five times higher than for those without any disability. Both men and women with intellectual disabilities experience sexual violence that includes rape, sexual coercion without physical force, and sexual experiences without physical contact. Perpetrators of sexual violence are not only strangers but can be caregivers, acquaintances, and intimate partners. The perpetrator of the assault often determines if the crime will be reported.
Sex surrogates, sometimes referred to as surrogate partners, are practitioners trained in addressing issues of intimacy and sexuality. A surrogate partner works in collaboration with a sex therapist to meet the goals of their client. This triadic model is used to dually support the client: the client engages in experiential exercises and builds a relationship with their surrogate partner while processing and integrating their experiences with their therapist or clinician.
The Sessions is a 2012 American erotic comedy-drama film written and directed by Ben Lewin. It is based on the 1990 article "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate" by Mark O'Brien, a poet paralyzed from the neck down due to polio, who hired a sex surrogate to lose his virginity. John Hawkes and Helen Hunt star as O'Brien and sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene, respectively.
Corbett O'Toole is a disability rights activist. She had polio as a child. She ran the Disabled Women's Coalition office with Lynn Witt in the 1970s. She worked as a staff member at the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley from 1973 to 1976, and as a staff member for the Disability Rights and Education Fund (DREDF) from 1980 to 1983.
Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven – The Catholic Church and Sexuality is a philosophical book by the German theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann, first published in 1988 and translated in 1990. The book is about how sexual morality is governed by celibates in the Catholic Church, which she criticizes as misogynous. While this work represents a late 20th century view, and remains broadly relevant, in some areas material has become dated, as Pope Francis began to address some of the issues raised in this work in the early 21st century.
Streitraum is a series of public panel discussions held at the Schaubühne in Berlin since January 2000. Each season focuses on a different theme from the areas of politics and society. In moderated discussions held every four to six weeks before an audience of international guests, invited experts discuss topics from the areas of politics, culture, technology, media, and the human and natural sciences. The series has been organised and moderated by Carolin Emcke since 2004. Emcke states at the opening of each event that Streitraum is not a forum for arguments and conflict but rather an opportunity to watch people think. Each session ends with questions from the audience.
Nidhi Goyal is an Indian disability and gender rights activist who has been appointed to the UN Women Executive Director's advisory group. Goyal is the founder and executive director of Mumbai-based NGO Rising Flame and works in the areas of sexuality, gender, health and rights for women and girls with disabilities. She is also a stand-up comedian.
Anna Hájková is a Czech-British historian who is currently a faculty member at the University of Warwick. She specializes in the study of everyday life during the Holocaust and sexuality and the Holocaust. According to Hájková, "My approach to queer Holocaust history shows a more complex, more human, and more real society beyond monsters and saints."
Abha Khetarpal is an Indian disability rights activist and counsellor based in New Delhi, India. She is the founder of Cross The Hurdles – a counselling/educational resource website and mobile application designed for people with disabilities.
Sexual assistance is the support for people with functional diversity so that they can have sexual access to their own body. Some people with disabilities may not have mobility in their hands so, as they can not masturbate, they may need someone's help to perform sexual activities on their own body.
